Tuesday, November 13, 2007

XKCD

OK, so so far I have been doing all these bad comics and to this day none of them has brought me to my knees. However, when I started reading this comic, which is, in my mind, the literary equivalent of accidentally using your mom's toothbrush, I had a sort of a little avalanche in my head. Nothing too serious. Just a mountain goat bleating too loudly, and causing some ice to crack and fall. It didn't knock over any trees, if that's what you're wondering.

XKCD is sort of like the hive of the internet, as in people go in and out of it, all working toward the same cause, and it serves the useful purpose of providing metaphorical pollen for other comics, or "flowers". At the same time, though, I wish it wasn't a part of the process, because XKCD has stung me a grand number of times. As a matter of fact, I'd like to think that the wounds are still in me. It stings like if you were to loose your father, or maybe be emotionally distant from him.

What does it mean to be human? XKCD tries so hard to answer this, but in the end, it turns out to be kind of a stupid question, because no human would read XKCD. Not even a human who didn't know how to love his son, or a robot that was just discovering how to be human.

It's apparent from this appalling installment that XKCD can't be expected to deliver. It's like the pizza guy just kind of went slack-jawed and didn't even do a thing. It's like the flower shop had a wilting party.

Sometimes it's a perky situation in XKCD. Sometimes we see ideas fall. Sometimes there is love and romance. But there's an ingredient missing...Oh yes there is. Not all love is romance, and somebody forgot about it. Maybe somebody shoved it screaming into a closet and yelled. Maybe somebody hasn't dealt with their past.

Stick man: I can't figure this guy out. He's sometimes so open, but he never actually does any leaping off the page. He tells me things, and he talks to me, but I think it's all a front to justify who he is when nobody is watching. I resent him, but in a way I want to be like him.

Stick man with hat: He feels so distant... He's authoritative and he can discipline, but he has problems. Probably with alcohol and with not feeling the same love that he used to. I think that he wants to move on, but I'm terrified.

Sleeping girl: All she can do now is sleep. There is nothing for her when she is awake.

Velociraptor: The big problem with the velociraptors in this comic is that it is too obvious that they symbolize God. Way to hit us over the head with a keyboard from the seventies.

XKCD is more than a comic. It's a metaphor for a life that is just not working right. It's a sigh. It's a cry out for attention. It's a little boy who was raised by a television, and then we wonder why he lashes out and breaks the neighbors arm, and then he has to visit him at the hospital, but he doesn't want to and he screams until his mother says he doesn't have to go to the hospital but for once she would like to have a normal family.

I want to see a different XKCD.

An XKCD that gives hope to certain people who didn't have the best childhoods.

This is what I want to see:

That's what the real readers want. They want something that will comfort them for things that have happened in their lives. I'm sure that every person in the world can relate to at least one part of that comic that I just drew. Even if your dog didn't die, maybe your mom still yelled a lot. There is something here for everybody.

As you can see, XKCD doesn't really understand the real emotions. Just the fake ones that we put on. The ones that make us seem interesting, or that provoke a thought of attraction in a woman. This is just the kind of thing that makes us all wish that our grandpa had never done what he did in the garage. It makes us all wish we hadn't seen the things we had seen. It makes us all wish that our mothers had never had to tell us that it was going to be a long time before we could go back home again, because we changed the locks but we're never safe if a certain person knows where we live.

Your blog could be hilariously satirical... making fun of blogs that review webcomics (after all entire blogs dedicated to reviewing webcomics IS a rather ridiculous concept) is a relatively novel idea, and if it were done right it could be both scathing towards the genre and funny.

As it is, it fails.

The only way it becomes apparent that you're not being serious in your reviews is if one has actually read the comics you're reviewing (better yet, read some webcomic review sites, so as to understand the basis of your parody). If one were to read your reviews before having read the comics--which for most people is the logical order of events when it comes to something being reviewed--they would not be able to tell that you are subtly joking, and it would turn them off to a bunch of great comics. After reading the comments you receive, it's clear that most people dont understand that you're being satirical at all.

In other words: not a bad idea, but terribly executed.

Either that, or you're being serious with your reviews, not making fun of webcomic review sites, and are just a failure of a reviewer. The comics you claim are so bad, are some of the funniest and most clever online.

In either case, your blog is dull and uninteresting... the angry-rant style of writing you employ is long since played out and stale. And worse still, unlike your opinion in regard to webcomics, my opinion about your blog seems to be fairly universally agreed upon. Whoops!

I can't believe people think the joke of this blog is really subtle. You don't need to have read other review sites or even the comics linked to in order to get that it's a joke. All you need is one single shred of an ability to detect irony.

Just one!

This review was entirely about how sad a childhood "Sonty Mick" had. It wasn't about the comic at all! Come on, people!

Anonymous, is this your way of telling me that you want me to review that comic? Are you giving me the kind of thing that one would put in a "suggestion box?" Is this a comic that you hate and want a bad review written for?

Or could it be that it is YOUR comic? And you want it to be publicized on an award-winning blog?

Or perhaps you are just using my award-winning blog as a place to post your url to advertise.

Or are you, perhaps, a lesbian? (If you are I respect your opinions about who you should have sex with)

I truly hope you are kidding. Having read the comments here, it is clear that you have no idea what you are talking about. Not only do I read the comic regularly, but so do many of my friends. I'm not sure what you won an award for, but it must have been meaningless for this piece of trash to get it. Your review is neither funny nor true.

XKCD is for those of us who realize life is not all about happy endings and trophy wives and who is better than who and all that shit. It's for those of us who live in reality. It's for the intelligent. It's for the insane. It's not for fairytale douche-bags like you.

I'm quite surprised how few of the xkcd fans have seen the sarcasm in this blog. I had hoped xkcd was relatively free from rabid fanboys. It appears I was mistaken.

Anyway, I was linked to this by a smart xkcd fan who posted in the xkcd forums. I have never read a webcomic review before, but I have to say that you are a master of sarcasm, and I found the article lovely.

That was the height of satire right there. You gave the verisimilitude of conviction about the quality of XKCD. However you did not belittle the audience and left if for them to find your signs that this involve the proper use of irony. Also excellent links and the "good comic" was even more hilarious.

I'm an XKCD fan, and no, I didn't get the sarcasm/satire on the first reading. I would guess that I am not used enough to reading this kind of articles ; if I was, I'd say that your "good comic" gave it away the most.

So, not my style at all. Meaning that, basically, I don't like your blog. But still, like JFarceur pointed out, my opinion is that Randall answered your article with a comic tonight.

Now can you stop saying that those anonymous commentators are lesbians? It doesn't make any sense.. . .Ohh, right... not my style. Ok, I'm off now :)

Ugh...I can`t believe I just wasted all this time to read a review written by someone who clearly lacks a) the ability to write coherently and spell well b) the sense of humor required to make something like this fly c) substance.

Why make a blog about kidding about good webcomics? Why not just say the comics are good? Or better yet, why not review comics that are actually bad? This whole satire thing makes no meaningful sense. At least not in this poor example.

you know what? it seems that you are jealous. Randall rocks! and I just look forward to the next XKCD. When I read it, 99.9% of the time Randall delivers! I know life sucks (yeah, like somebody said "dogs die, get over it"), yeap, life sucks, but we have a great comic here. Long live XKCD!

I have no clue what you were trying to say in that whole post. It took me half of it to figure out that you wanted to complain about the comic, but even in complaining about characters I still had no clue what you were trying to say.

Plus, you didn't point out any flaws. You just said "look at this, this is bad, I don't like this."

I'm in favour of people having their own opinions, but explain yourself more clearly at least.

i have never gone to a site, read once review and never wanted to come back. if you are going to review a comics online....atleast have a sense of humor. or if you do have one you need to be able to understand the humor. for the computer geek/math geeks out there this stuff is totally true. every other xkcd comic i read i can honestly say that it reminds me of a time when something like that happened. the romance makes me smile, the humor makes me laugh what more should anyone ask for in a comic? i'm sorry that you cant seem to understand that.

I thought it was pretty amusing. If you need something making funny of angry maddoxian webcomic reviews to have giant signs on it saying, "MAN PEOPLE WHO WRITE ANGRY WEBCOMICS HATE STUFF SUCK A LOT HUNH HUNH HUNH, LOOK, I AM PRETENDING TO BE ONE LOLZ" you are probably not the sort of person who would appreciate it anyway.

So is this supposed to be a satire? All the comics that were linked where pretty funny. Reminds me of college days where nachos and cheese were considered a meal. And you really always did run out of one or the other. I guess its only funny to people who've lived in dorms...

Unless you understand this comic: http://xkcd.com/45/ you don't deserve to review XKCD. If you are trying to be funny, well... I'm terribly sorry, you must be a truly tortured soul to think anything you have written is funny.

Err... How many levels of irony are going on here? Are the people angry about the review also ironic? How about the people angry about the angry people? My irony dosimeter just turned black. Got to go...

The worst part of XKCD is how INCREDIBLY pretentious the fans are. "XKCD is for smart, REAL people! We're the gritty neo-anti-heros who know what's what, we deal with REALITY!"::rolls eyes, evil grin, etc::

I don't know which was more painfully smug, xkcd itself (which is brilliant, if painfully smug) or this satire, which got lost in the author's unresolved issues. oh wait. yes. not so much a painfully smug review of xkcd, the review itself was fairly thoughtful and flat; it was the getting lost in problems with the psyche, and how that's what the author of the review thinks everyone wants to read.

All these "Oh, Sonty Mick! You unloved bastard! How can you be so wrong about what a joy it would be to spin about in a hamster ball! You are a horrible horrible excuse for living meat that writes a blog about criticizing XKCD, the greatest thing since I wished fairies would fly out of my butt when the sun came up and found out that other people who can only draw stick figures feel the same way!" responses just confirm the truth: xkcd is lame and those that think it is an amazing webcomic have not much to think about while they dream about what kind of fairy tramp-stamp tattoo to get during their work day in the cubicle since they can't bear to think about how they have nothing to look forward to when they get home. What was new was the revelation of how, when someone espouses a view that contradicts their own about this sad excuse for a webcomic, seriously hostile and violent supporters of dreamy-go-nowhere-talentless webcomics are in actuality, since a contrary view to them becomes to them an attack on their personal unfulfilled wistful selves.

Thanks for uncovering what a tremendous amount of hypocrisy is at the meaningless core of xkcd fans.

somehow i can't really take this seriously, either you are very socially naturalistic (think: steinbeck) or you just gave xkcd the best review possible, why would xkcd write things for people who haven't had good lives? because it isn't romantically (in the broader sense) uplifting and sublime, why would it present things that don't happen in real life? because it presents the beautiful, hilarious, and/or ideal portions of life, i think you know this, your forced bad review of it (and it did read of being very forced) speaks wonders to what i hope is your admiration for it, but i might be wrong, the internet is full of idiots

I have to admit, I was at first inclined to take the post seriously. Upon second look, though, it finally hit me that the author was not trying to be serious.It was interesting to read, but if something takes two reads for even a devoted xkcd fan (and I would say I am pretty devoted) to detect the sarcasm, then it was perhaps a little too subtle.

I'll be fair and honest. Sometimes, XKCD is quite amusing, and every once in a while it makes a valid or intersting point. But most of the time it's just incredibly pretentious; it self consciously strives to be "the thinking man's web comic".

But possibly more annoying than the comic itself are its fans who email them around to each other in a fairly obvious attempt to showcase how smart they are that they find a joke about - say - Browninan motion or an allusion to Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem to be amusing. It's often called "geek humor" but it's really best described as "smug humor". It's all about the strip's author showing us how smart he (thinks he) is which provides an opportunity for his fans to subsequently conspicuously display their appreciation for his 'smart' humor and in so doing indicate how smart THEY are. It's obnoxious.

Man, are people seriously saying that this awesome article fails because a lot of people don't get it? If you think jokes have to be explained to be funny, why are you reading XKCD at all, to begin with? Ilaughed a lot with this text and I think the authos is hilarious! Congrats from the future for you, chap (since it's 2012 already)

His example of what xkcd should be is ridiculous. It's a "a webcomic of science, math , sarcasm, and romance", not "yay life is perfect and nothing sad ever happens". He's right with the metaphor in the beggining saying, " no trees were knocked down "-there were never any to begin with.